I have the amazing opportunity to create a garden from scratch. Before we bought this house, I have always had to work with the garden I’ve been given… on more than one occasion I’ve lived in a rental house and my main aim has been to keep the garden alive for the next owner inspection. When I last owned my own home I knew next to nothing about which plants to choose, how to keep them alive or even what I really liked.
Over the years of tending these gardens and killing more plants than I care to admit, I have learned a few things, I’m glad to say. During those years, I experimented with plants in pots in lieu of my own garden so I planted bulbs and watched what would grow where; I planted a lot of succulents and absolutely fell in love with them. Who can’t love a plant that replicates itself?! Echeverias and Sempervivums and other succulents create little clones of themselves and so you can create whole gardens from just a few plants and a bit of patience. After a bit of investigation, I learnt that in some countries Sempervivums are called ‘Hens and Chickens’ because of this habit of replicating their own little baby plants. In other countries they are called ‘house leaks’ as they are used in some countries to grow on the roofs of houses to little plug leaks. I love that!.
Australian natives plants offer an amazing range of subtle, hardy and in many cases, very beautiful plants that can be chosen to suit your local environment. There are many varieties like the gorgeous Grevilleas. So while many of us still choose to plant up our gardens with roses and other ‘exotics’, Australian native plants are becoming increasingly popular not least because of their tolerance of our extreme weather and low rainfall.
If you’ve read earlier posts, you’ll know i love Australian birdlife and a native garden is a great way to attract native birds. They need all the help they can get as their natural habitats are disappearing. Many Australian birds are very small and need protection from large predators like our very large aggressive ravens, butcherbirds and magpies. Suburban cats are an absolute menace. So planting ground cover for little birds is essential if they are to find hiding places away from predators.
So in beginning to plan my own garden, I can start with a few of these lessons:
- I love Australian native plants
- I love succulents
- These two broad plant types for the most part go very well together as they require little attention and not a lot of water – both useful things for an amateur (read uneducated) gardener in a state where rainfall is intermittent.
- I love Australian birdlife and want to attract them so that I can enjoy them and photograph them and give then a little haven in an inner city suburb
This all means I want to create an Australian native garden in my very own backyard.
Over the next few months (and years as gardens are a lifetime commitment), I will be changing my 60sqm of dirt into a native Australian garden.
The garden I have to work with was, until a few weeks ago, covered by a huge aircraft-hanger construction that was supposed to be a pergola. Made of thick pine planks, many struts, brackets, screws and nails, this construction was not only incredibly ugly in my opinion, it took up 3/4 of the garden leaving me just room for a patch of scrawny grass with a few paving stones leading to a small and inefficient shed.
This is all gone… including half of the cedar deck which covered most of the garden. The decking was repurposed to create a new deck to host our spa.
Now that the pergola has gone, the spa has been repositioned, the shed has been dismantled and redistributed and the essential water tank has been rotated so it’s in a more practical location, we are ready to start to build the garden.
Actually.we are ready to start planning to build the garden. I really couldn’t envisage what I had to work with until the space was cleared. What I’m left with is a rather big hole… ! When I reduced the deck I realised the ground beneath it was more than 30cms below the deck. We’re going to need a serious amount of topsoil before we can even think about putting in a plant.
I am entering that wonderful design stage… I can see what I have to work with and I know roughly what I want to create. Next step is to get some professional advice (we used professionals to dismantle the aircraft hanger and move the deck and water tank around – couldn’t have done it without help). Possibly I wont plant much until next winter/spring as in Melbourne we are entering the end of spring and beginning of summer and many young plants wont enjoy the 42 degree days we’ll get in the summer. But I will wait to see what my gardener advises. Until then. Stay tuned.
Pamela Sutton-Legaud CFRE MBA 
